Later is now. The kit offers the early and late dorsal fin types and the joint of the vertical stab to the fuselage is, well..... awkward. Holding the parts togther shows an interlocking tab arrangement at the front of the joint and absolutely no means of lining up the joint at the rudder end. As is, the gaps are large and others who built this kit have had to apply filler here. Below is about the best you get without any mods, though it's still just a dry fit.
The issue isn't helped by the fact that Airfix have faithfully represented the fin offset from the centerline but, more imprtantly, both fuslelage halves are slightly warped. Below is the inner side of the same joint where you can see that the tab at the front rests on the a ledge moulded into the fuselage.
Here you can see the offset of the stab and the warp that needs to be accommodated:
Rather than fill the large gaps, I decided to work the joints by removing material from the tab so it sits deeper and chamfering the flat seam faces. After doing this and gluing things up with tape to align the edges near the rudder, things turned out pretty good:
The disadvantage of this is that closing the gap creates a small step on the top of the fuselage but this is easier to deal with than filling and scribing seams in my opinion. One the inside, after the TET set up, I reinforced the joints with gel CA. This will need to be smoothed at the rudder end so that the faces of the two fin halves come togther flat.
So that's all for today. Tomorrow is Mosquito day so no progress will be seen here for a day or three. Thanks again for following along.